What I Call Happiness
by Starling-Scully
Summary: Clarice explores her own mind, and finds happiness in the most twisted things.


Disclaimer: I don't own the characters in this story. Personally, I think they belong to each other, and of course, the brilliant author of Hannibal.

I hope you enjoy it. Please review. Peace.

Diana

**What I Call Happiness**

I'll wonder forever where everything went fatally wrong… or utterly great. I crossed the limit far enough to drown, I swam in depths I'd never known existed, pulled off several layers that grimly led me to the core. And when I got there, I made sure to put the layers back up to surround me. Nothing got past them. Nothing got past them but a dear old friend, Jack Daniels. I don't know exactly when my misery became my fate. Maybe that's what happens when you fight hard against happiness, destiny gives up on you and you've crafted your doom. You wished to be buried in beach sand and it's exactly what you get. 10 meters of beach sand, 50 feet of crap, and that's where you find yourself.

Maybe the bricks that made up my wall weren't thick enough. He got through. He got through and he figured me out. He knew all about me, while I knew nothing of me. The intoxicating liquid of truth and evasion, though clear, never allowed me to see what he saw. And I hate him the more for it. And I love him the more for it. I wish he had never ignited the flame, I wish he had never brought my senses back, I wish he had never shut off the part of my brain that held the pledges of commitment to the F.B.I., or the ones that had a sense of right and wrong for that matter. I wish I had fallen and gotten a concussion the day I was asked to speak to him and ask him for help… I got way more than that. I wish he had never burnt my skin with one single finger and a roguish stare. I wish I weren't returning his kisses the way I'm doing now…

I've come to believe that one can feel happiness through feelings of anger, exasperation and sadness… even of regret. I've come to realize that smiling doesn't necessarily constitute to happiness, nor is in any form related. Tears, however, are the most honest thing even when you're faking, because you can't wipe away a tear as easy as you can hurt someone and steal their smile or keep a straight face. It's harder to make someone happy than to make someone mourn over what they, as part of humanity, have lost. No, it is bullshit that giving someone a flower will make them smile… a flower means nothing, a smile means nothing while the ecstasy of being in somebody's arms for the first time means everything…

…unless it's his smile. His eyes can tell me all I need to hear, while he uses his voice to enunciate my name in the most seductive way, in the most adorable way, in the most lustful way, in the most sincere way. My name, Clarice, was made for his lips, and my lips were made to kiss his. I know that to him, I'm more than a carnal desire, because he's had his share of carnality, and he desires me in every level of it, though I know he'd never dare to hurt me… aside from the quick bites that draw the smallest amount of blood, and still, so little seems to fill his desire. I've given myself to him, it is within him to decide what he wants to do with me, he, and only he, could take a bite out of my body and I would receive pleasure from the pain he would cause, wanting nothing but to please him. And I hate him the more for it… but… I love him the more for it more than I could ever hate him. I love the way he makes me ache, and I want to make him feel the way he makes me feel.

I take a small but powerful bite and he looks startled, I let a small line of blood trickle down his chest, and never ceasing eye contact, I lick it with the tip of my tongue. Never had I tasted a more delectable wine, and he seems to like it, because he holds my eyes in his for a moment and then closes them and emphatically whispers my name, the way he says it is intoxicating, it encloses me in a small chamber of torture and he pulls me out just before I suffocate, before I go mad. But then again, I am mad. This is what I call happiness.


End file.
